The present invention generally relates to the pricing of a product to be sold over a network, and in particular to determination of a market price for a product to be sold on a website.
The immense popularity of the internet has given millions of individual users the ability to buy and sell practically any given item. Amazon.com, eBay, and Craig's list are just a few of the many websites that provide the means for the purchase and sale of thousands of new and used goods. As a result, buyers are now able to comparison-shop various websites and sellers offering the same product in order to find the most favorable price and terms of sale.
Unfortunately, this type of background research consumes copious amounts of time for the buyer, and in the end, confusion may still exist as to whether a product has been properly priced. Shipping and handling costs are often embedded in the sales price, often to the surprise of the buyer. Sellers are also inconvenienced as inefficient price management makes it hard for the seller to know how to effectively price their goods. As the number of online buyers and sellers constantly increases in today's ever changing marketplace, the variety in pricing also increases, and a true market price remains obscure to both the buyer and seller alike.
Many pricing systems have been developed in an effort to address the aforementioned problems. For example, Demand Tec Inc., U.S. Pat. No. 6,851,604, discloses a system for updating prices for a particular subset of items. Alibris.com, U.S. Patent Publication No. 2005/0071249, discloses a method and system for repricing a good for sale in an online transaction. In particular, when a seller wishes to change a listed price due to varying market conditions, the seller sends the system a repricing request and selects a new price. Though these systems account for price changes relative to the market, the seller is still inconvenienced by having to reprice the item after its initial listing. Since the market constantly changes, the seller still remains unsure as to whether a product has been listed at an optimum price, thereby causing the market to remain unstable and the true market price for a particular product to remain unknown.
Accordingly, there is a need in the art for a more efficient system and method for pricing a product to be sold in an online transaction.